The Collective-Action Constitution

The Collective-Action Constitution

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Year of Publication

2024

Series

Theoretical Perspectives in Law

ISBN

9780197760963

Description

The primary structural purpose of the United States Constitution is to empower the federal government to solve problems that the states would need to act collectively to solve, and to prevent the states from undermining these solutions or causing such problems from the perspective of the Constitution or Congress. Any faithful account of what the Constitution is for and how it should be interpreted must include this main structural function. The Constitution was established principally because of the widely recognized failures of its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, to adequately address "collective-action problems" facing the states, including funding the national government, regulating foreign and interstate commerce, and defending the nation from attack. These challenges are called collective-action problems because the states would need to cooperate or coordinate their behavior-they would need to act collectively, not individually-to solve them, and they would often struggle to do so. In a fundamental sense, the U.S. Constitution is the Collective-Action Constitution, and the sobering problems facing America today-including inadequate access to health care, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and future ones, opioid addiction, gun violence, racism and other bigotry, political extremism, unlawful immigration, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation-cannot be adequately dealt with by government if Americans do not recognize this truth. The main goal of the Collective-Action Constitution is not to vindicate a conception of economic efficiency, but to create and maintain political and economic union.

Disciplines

Constitutional Law | Law

Subjects

Constitutional law

The Collective-Action Constitution
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